Wednesday, July 8, 2009

GovBursting & The Denial of Governmental Services Attack

I was just reading a few articles about a series of new cyber attacks on several US government websites. According to an article by the AP, "a widespread and unusually resilient computer attack that began July 4 knocked out the Web sites of several government agencies, including some that are responsible for fighting cyber crime."

"The Treasury Department, Secret Service, Federal Trade Commission and Transportation Department Web sites were all down at varying points over the holiday weekend and into this week, according to officials inside and outside the government. Some of the sites were still experiencing problems Tuesday evening. Cyber attacks on South Korea government and private sites also may be linked, officials there said."

With the ever increasing amount distributed denial of service attacks on various governments, it seems that there is a trend in the attempt to limit access to crucial pieces of governments public web infrastructure and websites. Although these attacks are not hitting any particularly critical infrastructure they are certainly causing problems for the those who may want to access governmental information in a timely manor. I'm calling this latest tactic, Denial of Governmental Services attack. DoGS. Yup, like the animal.

Actually what all this recent activity is really pointing to is the need for governmental agencies to have some sort of actual cloudbursting contingency plan in place. Whether it's a Federal Cloud Capability or just a trust third party cloud provider, the need for a GovBursting capability is real and should be addressed now.

I'll post more thoughts on this topic in the coming days including the potential for the creation of a Cloud Performance Certification. I'll be in Washington DC this coming Sunday and Monday. I'm fairly certain this will be a hot topic of discussion.

#DigitalNibbles Podcast Sponsored by Intel

If you would like to be a guest on the show, please get in touch.

Instagram